love notes 03 | craving, devouring, savoring
the taste of things, steak frites, chocolate stout cake
When we speak about love, we mean the desire for beauty. — Marsilio Ficino
The Taste of Things
I had the pleasure of watching Trần Anh Húng’s The Taste of Things at the IFC Center last week.
Set in the late 19th century French countryside, the film is a sensuous culinary romance between a masterful cook (Eugénie) and the gourmand she works for (Dodin Bouffant). The storyline is magnificent: Eugénie and Dodin share a decades-long bond in crafting immaculate meals together, and Dodin has repeatedly pleaded Eugénie to marry him - to a bittersweet ending.
But I was even more struck by the film’s narrative luxury: it opens with a 38-minute-long cooking sequence, mostly dialogue-free; the camera glides through the kitchen to follow Eugénie and Dodin’s immaculate orchestration to prepare an intricate, multi-course feast. Chopping, searing, basting, sieving, tasting, plating - each and every step is under close study like a moving still-life painting. The lettuce Eugénie gently handles shares the same velvety folds as Ambrosius Bosschaert’s flower petals. The perfectly poached pear Dodin presents has the same translucent gleam as Adrian Coorte’s Still Life with Asparagus. It is all so decadent. It is all work, all human effort. And there is so much visual pleasure.
What does it mean to look at food so closely, in nearly painterly detail?
Perhaps the answer lies in the undertones of vanitas lurking throughout the film. When Dutch masters depict flowers at full bloom, they capture the zenith before the fall, the moment of perfect ripeness before decay - it is a defiant celebration of life’s ephemeral beauty. The delicate omelet Eugénie and Dodin shares is best when right off the pan. A Baked Alaska is most glorious the first instant it lit on fire. No feast lasts forever, neither does Eugénie and Dodin’s love story. Every exquisitely made meal, once consumed, will only be a memory.
As New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her review:
“At the center of everything good in the world is a bittersweet kernel: All things pass away.”
One can argue the painstaking narrative luxury in The Taste of Things is Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death, it is a vanity as in critic Harry Berger’s Caterpillage: the “vanity of being mortal, the vanity of failing to be art, the stupid hope that art can conquer death.” But I prefer to see every frame of film as an innocence in Annie Dillard’s words, “the spirit’s unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object”, to see things as they are, to find the world enough, to find time, to live as purely as we can, in the present.
The eye suffuses what it sees with I. Not ‘‘I’’ in the sense of my story, but ‘‘I’’ as the quickest, subtlest thing we are: a moment of attention, an intimate engagement.
[It is] a way to live, a principle of attention, a faith that if we look and look we will be surprised and we will be rewarded, a faith in the capacity of objects to carry meaning.
— Mark Doty, Still Life with Oyster and Lemon
Catch it if you can… The present is an invisible electron; its lightning path traced faintly on a blackened screen is fleet, and fleeing, and gone… What use has eternity for light?
From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt - older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath.
— Annie Dillard, “The Present”, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,
Eating is probably the most Sisyphean act of all: we eat in response to hunger to feel temporarily fulfilled, only to feel hunger again later. But this is also what makes life so delightful, that there’s always more to desire, another craving to sate, another flavor to be savored.
I love The Taste of Things as a tender reminder to honor and pay closer attention to our cravings, and especially Dodin’s quote of Saint Augustine at the end of the film:
“Happiness is continuing to desire what we already have.”
In this spirit, I’ve been craving and savoring lots of steak frites and chocolate cake lately. These are my love notes —
Steak Frites
Roland Barthes deemed steak part of the same mythology as wine:
The prestige of steak evidently derives from its quasi-rawness. In it, blood is visible, natural, dense, at once compact and sectile. One can well imagine the ambrosia of the Ancients as this kind of heavy substance which dwindles under one's teeth in such a way as to make one keenly aware at the same time of its original strength and of its aptitude to flow into the very blood of man.
Its cooking, even moderate, cannot openly find expression; for this unnatural state, a euphemism is needed: one says that steak is à point, 'medium', and this in truth is understood more as a limit than as a perfection,
— Roland Barthes, “Steak Frites”, Mythologies
As for myself, I didn’t really eat steak until I started dating Alex in college.
My family’s diet skewed towards lean poultry and fish - red meat was always on table as a supplement rather than the main event. Alex grew up quite the opposite: our visit to his parents in LA is never complete without a steakhouse dinner.
I learned to eat steak because Alex cooks steak exceptionally well - it unlocked a new realm of flavors I never knew I’d crave. One of the first dinners Alex made for me is a dry-brined ribeye seared perfectly medium rare, on top of a bed of grilled white asparagus. We’ve since sought out our fair share of serious steaks together - the iconic House of Prime Rib in SF remains unbeatable - but I really do enjoy simple steak frites the most, preferably accompanied by an acidic leafy salad to cut through the richness.
In the past two weeks, I had a work lunch of french dip with excellent frites at Le Marais, intimate dinner conversation over steak frites at Table d’Hote with peppery watercress, and I still craved more. So Saturday dinner was a homemade strip steak with even more watercress dressed in a bright honey dijon vinaigrette - frites left out to be desired.
To unite succulence and simplicity with such elegance - it is a true joy.
Chocolate Cake
Another recurring personal craving lately has been chocolate cake.
Somehow, Veniero’s dark chocolate mousse and Chez Ma Tante’s olive oil chocolate cake evoked the memory of a balmy evening last summer at Vinegar Hill House - where a chocolate Guinness cake completed an excellent dinner of juicy pork chops and homemade pastas. The cake is pitch black, dense but not too sweet with hints of malt, topped with a stark white cream-cheese frosting - simply divine. I decided to recreate it myself:
CHOCOLATE CAKE
1 cup Guinness stout
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 9-in springform pan and line with parchment paper. 2. Heat Guinness and butter in large saucepan over a medium low until butter melts, remove from heat. Whisk in cocoa and sugar. 3. Combine sour cream, eggs, and vanilla; whisk into cocoa mixture. Whisk in flour and baking soda. 4. Pour batter into pan. Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until cake is firm. Remove to wire rack; cool completely. Remove from pan. Spread frosting on top.
CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
Beat 8oz. softened cream cheese until smooth; gradually add 1 1/4 cups of powdered sugar, beating at low speed just until blended. Gradually add 1/2 cup cream; beat until blended
Coincidentally, I stumbled upon Ovenly in Greenpoint last weekend - their signature Brooklyn Blackout Cake is also black as night and made with black chocolate stout, frosted with salted dark chocolate pudding buttercream. I couldn’t leave without getting a slice.
It was so, so heavenly.
Perhaps Kierkegaard is right that we misunderstand repetition in leading to boredom, that the most consistent sources of happiness in life are really the result of repetition.
Happiness is continuing to desire what we already have, indeed.
Hope you have a wonderful Sunday and week ahead.
Gorgeous as always 🤍
Lyndsey, this is another great piece. From the point of cooking of the movie and the food such as steaks and cakes to sharing your understanding of the happiness. Life is what you observe that the happiness comes from all angles. Being happy and discovering the happiness in different aspects will make the full meaning of the life.